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" "it is the longing for happiness that is potentially radical, while the morality of sacrifice is an age-old weapon of rulers. I don't mean to suggest that social revolution can be painless-only that there is no reason to go through the pain if not, finally, to affirm our right to pleasure. In the meantime we have to live our lives, which means living with the contradictions of a system built on the premise that one must continually choose-insofar as one has a choice-to be either an oppressor or a victim. So long as that system exists, our pleasures will be guilty, our suffering self-righteous, our glimpses of freedom ambiguous and elusive.
Ellen Willis (December 14 1941 – November 9 2006) was an American essayist and critic. She was director of the cultural journalism program at New York University and co-founder of the feminist group Redstockings. She played an important role in the development of sex-positive feminism.
Biography information from Wikiquote
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The drug war has nothing to do with making communities livable or creating a decent future for black kids. On the contrary, prohibition is directly responsible for the power of crack dealers to terrorize whole neighborhoods. And every cent spent on the cops, investigators, bureaucrats, courts, jails, weapons, and tests required to feed the drug-war machine is a cent not spent on reversing the social policies that have destroyed the cities, nourished racism, and laid the groundwork for crack culture.
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The perceived conflict between class and cultural politics arises not because they are intrinsically incompatible but because majoritarian leftists have uncritically equated the cultural values of workers and "ordinary people" with their historically dominant voices: white, straight, male, and morally conservative.